The water has reached our deck of the ship

“One-third of unemployment insurance claims have been filed by women.”

Vice President for Women and Family Affairs, Labour Day 2026

The head of our research group posted a message in the Baleh app telling us to come to the university building sometime between tomorrow and next Saturday to collect our personal belongings and take them home. For now, only three of the eight members of the group will have their six-month contracts renewed. The rest of us have been sent home.

The director has done everything he can to keep the group alive. He has spoken to each of us separately, explaining why it was these three who were chosen. One of them has to keep her supplementary health insurance because her husband has cancer. Another colleague's husband was dismissed from the university in 2022 after supporting students arrested during the Woman, Life, Freedom movement, and translation is still his only source of income. The third has sick parents who depend on her care.

I wrote to the director: “There's really no need to explain. Even without any of those circumstances, these three deserved faculty positions at the country's leading university, not temporary contracts at a half-shuttered one.”

So, I won't be going in on Monday for a final farewell with the rest of my colleagues either.

Iran's domestic internet can barely support three online classes at once, and my husband still refuses to sign up for the country's tiered internet system, so he has to teach his online classes using the university's connection. Ever since the ninth of Esfand, we haven't dared leave the children home alone.

At exactly 9:34 that morning, each of us spent an hour and a half running on foot to reach the school and pick up the children. One of them was shaken for ten days afterwards by the sound of the explosions and the wait for us to arrive. When the war continued and the barracks at Qasr Crossroads, near our home, were bombed, things only got worse.

Now one child has classes on the Shad platform from ten until noon, and the other from eleven until one. The school principal has warned us that the system can't handle all the students logging in at once. The lesson files are available for only a single day, and the children have to hear the teacher's explanations then and there, no matter what.

I've cancelled their extracurricular classes, blaming the internet. A colleague told me, “You should explain that it isn't really because of the internet. Tell them we have to watch our spending. That's what I told my own kids.”

But I don't want to say that.

For now, I've borrowed some simple English storybooks from the library. We've made a deal: whoever finishes their book first and writes a summary of it will get a proper prize—a three-month top-up for their Spotify account. I can still manage five hundred thousand tomans. But the programming classes and French lessons that cost eight hundred thousand tomans per session are no longer possible.

For ping-pong, we go to the free tables in Saei Park in the evenings instead of the sports club.

The younger one asks, “So this year, should I write homemaker for Mum's occupation on the school form?”

“Don't be in such a hurry,” I tell him. “There are still a few months until registration for the new school year. I'll be back at work by then. Just wait, sweetheart.”

He says, “The other day Grandma was reading something from the newspaper to Dad. Some economics wizard or something said that out of 146 countries, Iranian women rank 143rd when it comes to having jobs and keeping up with men. So, I wouldn't count on it. Looks like lots of mums have become unemployed.”

“Well, don't count on it either,” I say. “Even if I do lose my job, you're not dumping your school copying assignments on me.”

The younger one says, “Well, now you'll have time to make kotlet. You're unemployed.”

“Grandma's making kotlet on Friday,” I say. “When she calls and asks what you'd like for lunch, tell her kotlet.”

The older one says, “My friend went to his dad's workplace and got to watch YouTube. Tell Dad to take us to work with him.”

“Your father definitely isn't going to do that,” I say. “Let's just pray the VPNs start working again.”

“Could you buy one gigabyte of config?” he asks. “With one gig we can set the quality to 144p and watch YouTube for a few hours. I promise we'll make it last and not use it up too quickly.”

“All right,” I say. “If I find a reliable seller, I'll buy some. Not every configuration can access YouTube anyway.”

I know I won't buy it. I can't afford a million tomans for a single gigabyte. Better not to promise it in the first place.

I go back to dusting. Today I need to wrap the painting I received for my fortieth birthday in bubble wrap so my husband can take it to the gallery owner tomorrow. We're short of money for the car repairs and the insurance renewal. My husband has told Mrs. G. that his wife doesn't really like the painting and we'd like to pass it on.

I take it down from the wall.

I loved that painting.

It was a gift from my husband's family.

“A woman in Kurdistan, renowned for the beauty and abundance of her hair and the mother of several children, was unable to find bread for them. In desperation she cut off her hair and sold it to a household for three thousand and ten shahis. She took the money to the market and still could not find bread.”

Vaqaye'-ye Ettefaqiyeh, Safar 1297 AH

I still have twelve million tomans left from my New Year bonus, my March salary, and my severance pay. The children's holiday money from their grandfathers adds another five million. New one-million-toman banknotes have just been issued. Without telling the children, I've slipped five of their notes into my wallet and plan to do some shopping on my way back from the university.

I take the metro.

The women's carriage is emptier than at any point in the seven years I've been making this journey every day in Spring. There are seats available.

It's not just the metro. Everywhere is quieter.

The office workers who used to double-park their cars on our street in the mornings have disappeared. The hawkers who wandered through the metro carriages are gone too.

Two young women are still selling things in the carriage, but because business is slow they're offering discounts. One of them, selling sanitary pads and tissues, turns toward the seated passengers and calls out:

“Ladies, Turkish sanitary pads. Three packs for three hundred thousand. You can't get Iranian ones for less than a hundred and fifty these days.”

The woman beside me laughs.

“Thank God for the vouchers,” she says. “At least now we can buy sanitary pads with them.”

The vendor laughs too.

“Use your voucher for chicken,” she says. “I used to sell piercings. Now I'm in the tissue and sanitary-pad business. Yesterday I sold fifteen three-packs from morning till night.”

I get off at the next station and walk the rest of the way to the university. The shared taxis that used to wait outside the metro station have disappeared as well. The sky is as blue as it can possibly be, and the edges of the motorway are covered with wisteria and honeysuckle blossoms. In the midst of war and bombardment, Tehran has given us one of its most colourful springs.

Before I reach the security kiosk outside the research institute, I pull my headscarf up from around my neck and over my hair.

The security officer, dressed in black, greets me with a smirk that says I saw that. Then he says:

“Doctor, before you take your things, please stop by so we can make an inventory. We need to receive back any property that was issued to you.”

“A voice recorder and two hard drives were signed out to me,” I tell him. “The computer, desk, and chair are all where they belong. I'll call you when I'm leaving and you can come upstairs.”

After the eighteenth and nineteenth of Dey, the same security officer had shown up at the university with his head wrapped in bandages, claiming he'd been in a traffic accident.

But Seyyed, the tea server on our floor, had a different story:

“He went out to beat people up, got injured himself, and lost his motorbike in the process. That's the story he tells you lot. To us, he boasts about roughing people up in Tehransar. They'd given him a gun.”

The room smells stale. Our potted plants have dried out; no one has watered them since the ninth of Esfand.

I quickly gather up my notes and index cards and take the photocopies I'd made from borrowed issues of Danesh. I had planned to write an article about Masoumeh Kahhal. There's no point now.

A colleague and I were supposed to write a joint article about the role of women in the Bread Riots. She had been working through Eyn al-Saltaneh's diaries, tracing women's participation in the social movements of the period and the way those movements were reflected in the press.

She has left a note for me on the desk:

Dear F., Pray that the bread riots don't come for us too. I love you. I've taken my own notes home. Yours, R.

“Driven by the high price of bread, a thousand women gathered in agitation at the gates of the government citadel in Shiraz. They sent a telegram to Tehran and staged a sit-in at the telegraph office.”

Vaqaye'-ye Ettefaqiyeh, nos. 579–580

Our group's budget had finally been approved after the death of Ebrahim Raisi and the arrival of the new government. Then, for lack of funding, it vanished into thin air.

On my way home, I read a text message from my husband:

“The university has paid part of my salary: 28 million. For now, that's seven million less than last month.”

Once he pays the rent, we'll have ten million left.

The produce market near our house has not reopened since the bombing, so I head down Shariati Street to a chain supermarket called Seven. I've typed my shopping list into the notes app on my phone.

The store has two checkout counters: one for purchases made with government voucher credits and another for everyone else. We still haven't signed up for the vouchers, just as we never took the cash subsidies or the privileged internet access offered to university professors. We take a certain pride in calling it resistance.

My husband says: “Nineteen months of work. I checked the Word file and realized I've spent more than 2,310 hours on it. Even if it gets published this year, I won't see any money from the publisher until eight months after publication. What a ridiculous way to make a living.”

Encouraged by the ceasefire, we've arranged to take the children and some of their classmates to Laleh Park for an evening of cycling. I have to make Olivier salad sandwiches.

In the afternoon, we strap the bicycles to the back of the car and head for the park. On Keshavarz Boulevard we get stuck behind a convoy of flag-waving cars. Every evening, Valiasr Square and the boulevard belong to them.

The younger child asks: “If there's a ceasefire, then why are those machine guns and black vehicles still here?”

His father replies: “They've made a ceasefire with America and Israel. They're still at war with us.”

I bite my lip, hoping he won't continue. 

Ten parents and fourteen children are supposed to stay together until seven in the evening. All our situations are much the same.

No sooner have the parents arrived than they begin talking about the morning of the ninth of Esfand and the fears their children developed after the war began: bedwetting, nail-biting, refusing to sleep alone in their rooms.

Then the conversation turns to layoffs and unemployment.

One couple - he works in adult theatre, she in children's theatre - have both been out of work for months. I had been meant to serve as the history consultant for his latest play. Another mother has lost her job at a travel agency.

By the end of the conversation, we realize that six of us have lost our jobs.

The theatre director, who had borrowed our copy of Journey to the Court of the King of Kings by Heinrich Brugsch, the Prussian ambassador to Iran, has brought it back with him. Brugsch, too, had written about the bread riots and about women.

The director's wife leans toward me and whispers: “Without telling my husband, I took both our wedding rings and sold them. The landlord was decent about it and sent word that we didn't need to pay rent for Farvardin. If I'd known things were going to get this bad, I would have waited another month before selling them. Gold went up again this week.”

Brugsch had written that women stood in the front ranks of the bread-riot protests because officials treated them with a degree of restraint and government agents hesitated to attack them for fear of violating social norms. That gave women a particular place in revolts and popular uprisings.

I turn to the theatre director's wife. “How long do you think we can hold out?”

“Two months at most,” she says. “After that, we'll have to be out in the streets ourselves. The water has reached the upper decks of the ship now. We're only in the middle decks.”

The theatre director, who had been planning to write a play about the bread riots, overhears us.

Laughing, he says: “Start warming up. One of these days I'll take you both in front of the Interior Ministry and we'll stage a performance. You two can play the December 1942 scene. Lead the crowd and shout: Bread, cheese, and wild herbs — We are hungry, Qavam!

“It'll practically be documentary theatre.”

He bursts out laughing. A long, loud laugh.

The park has grown dark. All the better. These days my laughter and my tears have become so alike that no one can tell the difference.